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Rabbi Joanna Samuels

ON ROSH HASHANAH

“Today the world is born,” we proclaim on Rosh Hashanah. A provocative Midrash teaches that Rosh Hashanah is not the anniversary of the first day of creation, but instead the sixth day of creation. On one long sixth day, God created Adam and Eve, who, in turn, loved, disobeyed, were banished from paradise, and learned that they would, eventually, die.

It is this sixth day that is the churning expanse of my yoma arichta—the “long day” that the sages called the two days of this holiday. I am intensely present to the miracle of being alive and yet frighteningly awake to the dark reality of mortality. I am optimistic that a new year could bring renewal to my soul and yet I confront my stubborn habits and long-standing failures. I am aware that I can—I must!—marshal my abilities in the service of making our world more just, and yet I am overwhelmed by how much seems unfixable.

Each and every Rosh Hashanah, as I seesaw from gratitude to fear, from possibility to narrowness, I consider the yoma arichta of Jewish history, the continuous narrative of a people, diverse and divergent, balancing on the same axis of optimism and fear. In the merit of all those whose lives make up the long years of our presence on earth, I commit to see possibility, to seek out repair, and to embrace the miracle of creation.